


Woman Inflammable

by Vehemently



Category: Supernatural, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehemently/pseuds/Vehemently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Is It: A meeting; a misunderstanding; a mission.<br/>Tagline: John Winchester was getting the hang of this paranoia thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woman Inflammable

John Winchester was getting the hang of this paranoia thing. The woman, she was normal, she was anybody: big-haired, tight jeans, maybe a little off because she didn't carry a pocketbook. The man, though. He was not normal. John found himself flexing his fingers as he observed the guy moving around the parking lot. He spent too much time making friends with the guard dog chained up in the shade. That turn of the head, the alert posture, the way that sightlines seemed to bother him. His jacket looked new, some kind of polyester or something, but underneath his clothes were straight out of a junk pile.

He wasn't a big guy; John outweighed him and was probably a couple inches taller to boot. But the man looked... odd. Needful. Hyperalert. Like somebody who fought to fuck the other guy up rather than to defend himself. There was a bandage on the knuckles of his right hand. John sat there with his fingers on the edge of the drapes and wondered whether he'd ever been in the service.

It would have been idle practice while the boys were napping, but the woman fed bills into the little slot in the office window -- like you couldn't even trust the office not to get held up! Like a no-star motel was a bank or something! -- and got back a key and they were headed over towards the row of doors. John was seized with the irrational fear that they had a key to _this_ room, that they would come in the door and demand his children, bundle them up and take them away somewhere. He stumbled to his feet, sweating, and grabbed a weapon from ontop the television and stood there against the door breathing hard.

The door had a steel plate in it: hard to break down. Footsteps came past the window and up to the door -- and then past, onward down the row. He listened carefully for the dull churn of the lock: two doors down. Number nine. They were just ordinary people, looking for a place to stay, and John Winchester was a crazy man who might shoot his neighbors.

He put the weapon back where he'd snagged it from, high up so Dean couldn't get at it.

The boys were still out cold in the bed, slotted together like puzzle pieces. John had left them in the car while he checked in, too afraid to let anybody see them, so they would all be sharing the one bed if John ever wound down enough to sleep. Where he lay with one arm behind his brother's head, Dean twitched suddenly, his whole body a-shudder. It wasn't so violent that it woke the baby, but John put a hand on his ribs to quiet him. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

Los Angeles was not turning out any better about that than any of the other places he'd been in the past six months. He wasn't sure why he'd come -- probably, just the vague memory of seeing other vets, interviewed by Dan Rather one time, living on the street and outside of official notice. John had seen them himself, had driven down to the bad neighborhoods and talked to a couple of guys in aging camo camped out on park benches about how they'd gotten there, whether they felt safe. But Dean had been uniformly terrified of them, and the baby squirmed and drooled, and each vet had ended the conversation by telling him it was a stupid idea to bring the kids with him. You never knew what might happen. John was thirty years old and healthy as a horse and Southern California was where everybody went to become somebody else, wasn't it? But that was a lot easier to do without a couple of kids always at your elbow.

Under his hand, Dean shifted, coming awake. He didn't cry when he woke up any more, the way he'd done at first: just opened his eyes and made to pull away from the baby without waking him. The poor kid didn't realize his arm was under Sammy's head at first, and tugged a couple of times with dazed confusion all over his face. "Hey," John mumbled at him. "Hold on. I got it." It was an easy thing, to twist a wrist under the baby's neck and palm his head up high enough for Dean to free his arm. He held up his little hand bloodless white, and gave a cranky whimper as sensation rushed back into it.

Dean tucked his hand up into his chest, nursing it with a dull whine, while John sat there feeling his younger son's pulse. He let the baby's head back down carefully and Sammy didn't even notice, serene in sleep. The kid was imperturbable, unlike his older brother. Dean let his father poke around the hand in question, and make sure it wasn't anything more than pins and needles.

"You hungry?" John asked him, not really expecting an answer. "There's a slot machine outside. I'll get us some chow."

Hair in his eyes, Dean nodded his assent. Which was almost like talking, honestly. Better than a blank stare, and his father stuck ranting in the bathroom mirror for company. A nod was practically conversation. John got up off the bed.

"Okay, guy. I'll be right back. Watch your brother while I'm gone." John didn't know how to say that in a way that wouldn't be taken literally. But the kid was still half-asleep anyway, and would be just as happy sitting in the fold of blankets as fooling around on the floor.

Outside the sky was piercing blue overhead, hot late spring. Everything smelled like ozone. John hadn't bought himself sunglasses yet, and had to squint. He searched his pockets for loose change while he paced his way to the machines, and only noticed that somebody was there in front of him when she said something.

"Oh, hey." It was the woman from room nine, the woman without a pocketbook. Her room door was wide open, the man she'd been with nowhere to be found. Her hair was frosted blonde at the tips, kind of like she was going for Farrah Fawcett-Majors, but messy and bedraggled as if it had been a while since she'd had access to a comb. She had on tight jeans and a tie-dyed shirt and looked like she hadn't slept. In the small of her back was tucked an awkward object shaped like a squarish comma that she altered her posture to hide.

John had the room key in one pocket and some change in the other, and his wallet back in the room next to his array of concealable weapons. It hadn't occurred to him to carry a handgun in the process of buying chips. She knew better, apparently: drug dealer, or gangster, or maybe this was an even worse neighborhood than he thought. It was weird: she didn't look particularly jumpy or scared, just politely getting out of the way while he stood dumb in front of the candy machine. She retrieved a Coke from the machine and stepped back out of his way. John guessed that it was a revolver, a .357 or .38.

"Just getting some snacks," he said. He moved slowly, hands open. His thick fingers were clumsy on the dimes, stupid tiny coins.

The woman watched him pick out two kinds of chips, and smiled. It made her seem younger, like a teenager. "Guess you're real hungry." She said it like somebody who said things just to be nice, just to make sure there wasn't an awkward silence. She popped open the top of her soda can.

John gave a half nod and had blurted, "They're for my kids," before realizing how stupid it was to give her any information. He was weirdly conscious of the daylight glinting off his wedding band. He did not have a lie available to him; if she asked, he was sure he would blurt everything about Mary being dead. But the woman stuffed her free hand into a pocket, shrugging her shoulder high, and said:

"I've been thinking about kids lately. What it'll be like. It's a lot of work, huh?"

Looking at her, John realized her hands were both occupied: he could disarm her as easy as breathing. Maybe not such a hardened criminal after all. He couldn't make sense out of it.

Chips flopped down to the dispenser slot and John said, "I guess so." He straightened up, packages in hand, and saw that she was eyeing the closed door to his room. "They get into everything, sooner or later."

"Is it really hard?"

John struggled for something nice to say. With two little kids hanging off him all the time, who couldn't make conversation or take care of themselves or leave him alone for an hour or two, that just needed and needed and needed and never stopped --

"Not so hard you don't do it," he said at last. "I'm John, by the way."

"Sarah," she replied instantly, and then paused, her smile faltering, as if rethinking the wisdom of telling a stranger her name. Even a harmless stranger in some no-star motel, even just a first name. She had to be in some kind of bad way.

"Hey," he said, slowly. It was a mistake to even try, but here he was opening his mouth anyway. "That boyfriend of yours --"

The woman started, and gave an awkward little laugh. "He's not my boyfriend." Her body tightened up and she repositioned her feet, wary. "I mean, he's with me, but not -- like that."

Nerves singing, John looked at her straight, caught her eye. He waited for her to settle and notice his size. "You know how to fire that thing?" he asked.

"What thing?" she gasped, with a nervous smile. Her mouth was wide, made for smiling, but that particular one wasn't good on her.

"None of my business," said John. A pretty girl might have a reason to check into a shithole like this, with a guy who isn't her boyfriend, who leaves her alone with a weapon she doesn't know how to use. A pretty girl might have a reason not to go to the police. John didn't owe this girl anything. "But if that guy of yours doesn't come back, you got someplace to go? Family, friends?"

"It's not what you think. I mean -- " Sarah paused.

"Okay," he prompted.

Something new came into her suddenly, some kind of new idea or reassessment of who she was talking to. Her face turned sharp, her jaw like a blade, and she said, "I'm fine, thanks."

John lowered his eyes. "Like I said. None of my business." He turned slowly and used the last of his change on a Coke for him and Dean to share. "I just -- I --" But he raised his head to her retreating footsteps. She didn't look back at him as she slammed the door of room number nine shut behind her.

And that was that. It wasn't his business. John paced slowly back to his own room, sun on his face, so that walking through the doorway was like somebody turning off the lights. He let the door slam shut behind him and stood there, waiting for his eyes to adjust, listening in the room for what might be going on. But all he could hear was the baby's lively mumble. The shaded darkness gained texture slowly and color soaked in and there were two little boys, light and dark, goofing around on the bed. Dean was sticking his finger in his brother's ear, that way that meant Sammy was about to start screaming. John wasn't sure why they were sitting there with no lights and the shades all pulled, till he remembered he'd done that himself.

Los Angeles was dizzying, sprawled, massed from the coast to the interior with slums right up next to the streets that had Mercedes parked on them. He had no idea where he could take a pair of kids to play outside. "Dean, quit bothering your brother," he said for the millionth time, and handed out the bags of chips as a bribe.

The rest of the day wasn't so bad; there were cartoons on the TV and then a ball game, and the kids made their own fun from plastic cups and unwrapped the soaps and drove them around the carpet like cars. John went out alone and found some fast food, and Sammy even ate most of what was put in front of him. The lettuce and onion in a Big Mac counted as vegetables, right? Mary would kill him if she saw what kind of meals he was providing. John had no idea what he was going to do when the money ran out.

With both children finally asleep, John re-checked the door for the third or fourth time: locked and bolted. The .45 was loaded and ready; he shut it into the bedside table on top of the Gideon's Bible and then tried to find a comfortable position on the bed so he could sleep with one hand on the drawer. He wasn't crazy enough to go to bed with a gun in hand, not yet; that was just cruising for Dean to come yammering and yanking on his dad's shirt for attention and get his head blown off by accident.

By brute force John voided that image from his mind. He kicked off his shoes and laid himself down next to the boys on the bedspread, groaning. He was getting stiff, all that sitting around. It was no way to keep at fighting trim. And with that self-reproach, he dropped off for the first bit of sleep he'd had in three days.

The dream was always the same. She burned, burned in horrified silence, staring down at him like the ceiling paintings in the church he'd been dragged to as a child. He breathed in the flames of her and felt his throat roughen as he screamed. The char took her skin, turned it black and crisped it up at the edges, the little blonde hairs on her forearms like tiny stinking firecrackers. That body he'd known every inch of, that face that always betrayed when he'd screwed up, that woman, that wife, turning to charcoal in front of his eyes. In the dream, he could never say her name, not even when she climbed down off the ceiling and reached out her roasted hands towards him. He never saved her. He couldn't even dream it. She died every time --

He jerked awake before the part where his dream-wife snatched up first one child and then the other and made them burn while they screamed and cringed. As John opened his eyes he registered the noise: gunshots, many of them, nearby, full automatic. He jackknifed off the bed and crouched on the floor. Drawer banging out, .45 in hand, cool under his grip. He crawled toward the door and set his back to it and realized he was in his socks and then realized he had no idea where the children were.

There, on the bed, mostly hidden under the bedcovers. A pillow with two heads on it, Sammy still sighing gently and Dean wide-eyed, frozen. John stared back at his older son, trying to formulate a plan. Silence, suddenly, as the shooting ceased. A dog barked wildly somewhere outside. Dean did not move except to blink.

A heavy thump outside, closer than the shooting: metal on something hard, right outside the door. Sammy twitched in his sleep, and subsided. A squeal of tires, and an engine gunned. High up, a truck probably, onto the quiet boulevard, away. John pressed the cool side of the .45 to his temple and tried to think while more traffic headed out, a fat Harley roar. The dog roared its frenzy, more growl thank bark.

He opened his eyes and Dean was still staring at him. "Okay," he whispered. "I'm going to put the baby on the floor. Your job is to drag your brother under the bed and stay there with him till it's safe. Go on, now," he added. Dean lay in trembling stiffness for one long moment, and got it together. He sat up and threw the blanket off his own shoulder while John slid Sammy off the edge of the mattress and down onto the carpet. Dean was right there, obedient, shoulders heaving. John steeled himself with the low sobs of his son's fear, and stood up to open the door.

He wasn't the only one in the motel standing in an open doorway with no idea what was going on. He wasn't even the only one with a weapon in hand. A Hispanic guy stood in the doorway to room number seven, wearing nothing but underwear and his hair a mess. He had a hammer in his hand, the big demolition kind of hammer, held comfortably like that's the kind of weapon you go for in a time like this. He looked over at John and John looked over at him and they both looked down the row. Door number nine stood open, but nobody was standing in it. The stink of burnt powder was strong.

John took that door like combat all over again, in low and tight, check every corner. Nothing moved, and nothing moved. The Hispanic guy with the hammer peeked in after. Curtains speckled with black holes blew in, the window-glass shattered and spilled all over the floor. The room was empty, empty even of blood.

More faces stood at the door, curious, clutching their disheveled clothes. John shook his head. No girl who looked too nice for a joint like this, no man who looked not nice enough. The kitchenette had been used at some point, a measuring cup half-full of water and a strange familiar chemical smell, but whoever had come in shooting had come too late. John stuffed the .45 into his jeans and shouldered his way out of the room.

The air was chill, that crisp spring smell. The empty boulevard, lit with yellow, yawned waiting for the morning's traffic. John looked over the parking lot at all the motel inhabitants. The owner or manager or somebody was still trying to calm the dog, which frothed at the end of its chain, howling at the road. The impulse to call the police was still there in John's head: as if they could restore order and put everything to rights. As if they had any idea.

John headed back into his own room and started gathering the weapons. He stripped that room of all sign they'd been there, hunting knife and spare diapers in the same duffel, and zipped it shut. He picked up his jacket from the floor and put it on.

"Okay, guys. We got to get going."

The children were still under the bed, Sammy still asleep. John made two trips, and on the second one carried both boys to the car. Dean hitched and gulped, crying still but that kind of exhausted crying that said he'd be done soon, and nod off. John thumbed away one or two tears, and then settled in the front seat to get them away, anywhere. Maybe he'd drive all night.

As he came up the on-ramp, the night bloomed orange, shocking bright. A fireball somewhere in front of him and to the left, big gouts of red like a napalm fire, and the writhe of black smoke on black sky. John stomped on the gas, because that was where his foot was, and the car leapt out onto the highway.

The sound of it followed hard-by, roaring through the windshield. "You stay down in back," John commanded, but Dean was already head-down, or already disobedient, and made no response. John forced himself to slow down, trusting the spedometer over his own heartbeat, and that came in handy when he saw ahead of him the swirling blue lights of a police car.

The flashers reflected weirdly off the smoke, giving it shape as it spread eastward in the wind. Just the one squad car was stopped on the highway, parked sideways to obstruct traffic. Its doors hung open and one skinny uniform stood on the concrete, his back to oncoming traffic, hands loose at his sides. John stopped so as not to run him over, pulled the parking brake, and went to stand next to him.

"What in the hell is that?" John asked, letting the bewilderment into his voice. The cop he stood next to was a skinny man, black or Hispanic, with a neat little mustache fringing his lip. The snap that held his service weapon in place on his hip was closed, forgotten.

"I don't fucken know," said the cop. "I don't.... fucken A."

The road was wide, starkly empty at that hour. Only a couple yards in front of where they stood, a pickup lay flipped on its cab, at least two of its tires flat and its undercarriage half blown to pieces. Two men in faded caps sat slumping, open-mouthed on the barrier, ignoring the second cop who stood dumbfounded by their side. Glass glittered everywhere under the lights, tiny stars spread across the lanes.

The cop next to John said, hoarse, "We got a call for a pickup out of control, maybe drunk drivers or a couple of kids on speed. I don't -- it was a fucken fuel truck. Fucken A."

John eyed the smoke, ahead and to his left. They were at least twenty feet above the surface streets, and even so gouts of red flickered in the black. He could hear it rumble, that dull roar of a lot of material going up at once, and taste it in the back of his throat. He wondered suddenly whether Dean was watching from the back seat, or whether he'd have the sense to keep his head down.

The cop shook his head. "Fucken hijack situation. White couple, probably high out of their minds. What is this country coming to?" He sounded near tears, or maybe that was the smoke ruining his voice.

The cop just stood there, shaking his head, while John made fists and took a step towards that fire. He knew at once it was the couple from room number nine. The shady man, and that poor scared girl, in her tie-dye and her feathered hair and a weapon she didn't know how to use. It hadn't been any of his business. If she was in the truck when it blew, she was already dead from the concussion and the shrapnel. But if not--

That girl could be burning alive _right now_. John took a step. Another, and he might hear her screaming. Just a little closer, and he would know for sure. He heard a shout behind him.

He did not know he was twenty yards along the highway towards the fire, and gaining speed, until the other cop tackled him from the side. They fell together in a heap on the hard pavement, and a blaze of pain scored John's arms and knees. The side of his head bounced, and his vision wobbled like a heat mirage. "No way," the cop was muttering, over and over. "No way, man. No way. Nobody else is dying tonight." Dazed, John lay on the pavement under a two-hundredweight of Los Angeles's Finest, shards of windshield glass like the glint in a thousand eyes in front of him. The cop let him up a little and John felt the grind of glass in the skin of his forearms.

"That's an industrial area," said the cop, and picked a bit of glass out of his own palm. He eyed John ruefully as he stood. "Nobody lives there. Anyway, my partner already called it in. If anybody needs evac, they'll do it."

John was too addled to argue. He sat upright, trickles of blood tickling down his forearms, and tried to pull himself together. All he could do was sit there and pant, choking on the acrid smell of the smoke. It would crowd its way into that girl's throat till she suffocated, or the hot gases would scald her lungs so bad they'd fill up with fluid. Heat on her fresh white skin would redden it, blister, and then leap to blackening flame. The rivets on her jeans would weld themselves to her hipbones. Her toes would curl in her trendy boots, her fingers become tight claws, tendons flexing in their final agony. John Winchester knew every single detail about how a woman burns to death.

The cop stood over him, looming, hand on the head of his baton as a reminder. John struggled to his feet, shoulders a-heave. It was too late already; if she wasn't dead she was dying. He cradled his bloody elbows in his palms and turned away, still dizzy. The Impala sat waiting for him back at the cop car, gleaming and impenetrable, flickers of flame reflecting off her chrome.

The cops watched him carefully, maybe trying to decide whether to drag him to an emergency room, or arrest him. John ignored them and lurched heavily back into the front seat he'd left behind only a couple of minutes ago. He couldn't think straight, and sat staring for a long moment. A rustling noise over his shoulder startled him badly, and he remembered about the boys.

Dean was disobedient, sitting up on the seat so that he would be seen in the rearview. Probably he'd seen all of it, flames and failure and the slow walk back to the car. John glanced at him and away, ashamed of his confusion. He put his fingers out to grab the wheel, and realized they were sticky with blood.

The boy made a noise in his chest, as if he could taste the smoke. "Dad?" he asked, and that was the first thing he'd said in six months.

Swallowing, John pulled himself together. "Look around, see if you can find a clean cloth or something. My hands are dirty."

He watched as Dean rummaged around in the footwells and came up with a t-shirt of Sammy's. The boy's hair stood up every which way and he passed the shirt over the seat-back with a frown.

"It's okay, guy," John said, and then made eye-contact in the rearview to say it again. "I'm okay." The more he said it, the more he made it true. John fingered the shards of glass still in his wrist.

"Dad," said the boy again. He wasn't so young he couldn't tell something had happened.

John mopped the drying rivulets on his arms, chafed his skinned palms. After a while, he said. "I just learned something tonight, is all." The baby's shirt was sodden with blood. He wadded it up and threw it down into the footwell. Dean was still watching. The dried tear tracks from earlier still marked his face, but he wasn't crying any more.

John let out a breath, and Dean in the back seat did the same. Without another word, John put the car into gear, and they turned away from the scene of the crime. If he drove all night, the Winchester family might be in a whole different state by morning.


End file.
